Jacques Maritain

On 28 April 1973 there died in Toulouse, France, at just over ninety
years of age, a man who has been hailed as one of the most influential
philosophers of the twentieth century, a man whose writings tackled the
fundamental problems of man in the modern world, a man whose
personality, by its strength and warmth, has influenced the lives of
Popes and Presidents, poets and painters, and people of many countries
and many levels of society.

The man was Jacques Maritain, and whatever the popular image of a
philosopher might be the outstanding characteristic of Maritain was his
capacity for friendship; and of all his friends his best had been his
wife, Raissa. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven but lived very much
on earth. Their lives were very much touched by the great events of
this century, as well as by the little things, which often do not seem
so little at the time, that make up all our lives.

Jacques and Raissa were born within a year of each other, he in 1882
into a Protestant family in France, she in 1883 into a Jewish family in
Russia. Their backgrounds were so different it was unlikely enough that
they would ever come together, let alone become Catholics and marry and
lead the lives described so beautifully in two of Raissa's books, the
aptly titled We Have Been Friends Together and Adventures in
Grace. The stories unfolded there describe their lives from the
time they met as students at the University of Paris at the end of the
nineteenth century. Of his years at the Sorbonne, Jacques was later to
say: 'The best thing I owe to my student days is that they enabled me
to meet the one who since then has always, happily for me, been at my
side in a perfect and blessed communion'.

Their origins

Jacques was born in Paris on 18 November 1882. The family atmosphere
was that of nineteenth century liberal Protestantism. His father, a
member of the Paris bar for almost thirty years, had little direct
influence on his son, especially after he had separated from his wife,
Geneviéve Favre-Maritain. Jacques and his sister, Jeanne, were
left to the care of their mother.

The Favres were one of the great intellectual and political families
of republican France, and Geneviéve's father, Jules Favre, a
prominent statesman, had passed on to his daughter his passionate
feelings for liberty. 'In Jacques' family tradition the dominant
element was an idealistic love of the people, the republican spirit,
and the political struggle for liberty.'(1)

As a child Jacques was what we might call a 'bookworm'. His health
was not good, although his mother did encourage him to get outdoors to
sketch and paint. The many friends and admirers of the brilliant and
vivacious Jeanne, who was seven years older than her brother, helped to
stimulate the intellectual gifts of the young Jacques. But in no sense
was Jacques 'too good to be true': amongst other things, he had to
learn early in life to moderate a very lively temper, part of the
strong independence of character which he always displayed.

Raissa, too, had shown precocious intellectual ability as a child,
but her temperament was one of gentle confidence. She was very keen on
dancing, especially at the gatherings of the Russian colony in Paris,
where her parents had emigrated ten years after her birth at Rostov-on-
Don in 1883. She, too, had a sister, Vera, who was three years younger
and who was eventually to spend most of her life with Raissa and
Jacques. Both girls received many opportunities to develop their
talents in literature, history and music, and Raissa was only sixteen
when she entered university. There she enrolled in botany, physiology
and embryology, and it was there that one day, as she left a class, she
met Jacques for the first time.

Early times together

In appearance Raissa Oumansouff, as she was then, was very
attractive, with large brown eyes, a broad forehead and neatly arranged
dark hair. Jacques, on the other hand, was in those days fairly tall,
with blue-grey eyes and blonde hair and beard. This is how he looked
when he met Raissa for the first time interrupting her thoughts to seek
her signature for a protest against the ill-treatment of Russian
socialist students by the Tsarist police. Many of Raissa's compatriots
who availed themselves of her parents' open-house were anti-Tsarist
liberal intellectuals or Marxist students. Not only did she sign, but
she joined Jacques in collecting signatures.

Their meeting was timely for each of them. Both were disappointed
with their scientific studies, which had failed to penetrate beyond the
surface appearance of things to their essences. Both, too, were
perplexed about the question of the existence of God. Not that their
conversations were confined to such deep issues. They were both, in
their own ways, essentially joyful people, and their companionship
blossomed during long walks through Paris.

Paris was the centre of the artistic world at the turn of the
century, and Jacques took great pleasure in introducing Raissa to the
world of art, particularly painting. In the words of Raissa, 'Rembrandt
was the innocent cause of the first violent difference which I had with
Jacques, wherein was first revealed to us the need we had of finding
ourselves at all times absolutely in agreement with one another'.

Their attendance at the lectures of Henri Bergson soon gave them
that 'sense of the absolute' which they were seeking and which has been
so basic to their writings. This was in contrast to the courses of
other lecturers, such as Felix Le Dantec: he was typical of those for
whom the intelligence was merely 'a flabby material which functions at
a temperature of thirty eight degrees', and consciousness was 'an
epiphenomenon'.

This period of history was racked by the pessimism which so often
follows unbridled materialism, and sensitive students like Jacques and
Raissa were inevitably caught up in the issues and controversies of the
day. Was life really meaningless? Although Jacques was later to be
quite severe in his criticism of Henri Bergson, it was this lecturer at
the College de France who introduced them to the intellectual tools
with which they were able to see through the anomalies of man's
existence. And just in time: Jacques and Raissa had made a pact that if
they could not find within one year the meaning of 'truth' and the
existence of evil they would kill themselves.

Catholicism

Jacques and Raissa were married in 1904, and they rented a small
apartment in Paris while Jacques completed his philosophy course. This
he did in 1905, after which he registered in an advanced biology
course. In the meantime Raissa had to discontinue her formal studies
because of poor health following a throat abscess. Thereafter she was
never to be entirely free of illness.

At about this time the newly wed Maritains came across the writings
of Léon Bloy. They were immediately impressed by his stirring
faith in Christianity, and his impatience with lukewarm, nominal
Christians. Christianity had not been something the Maritains had
seriously considered before but Bloy's ardent faith, so manifest in his
written words, was like a glowing coal for them.

On enquiring more about Bloy from their friends, they learnt of the
author's poor financial situation, and so they sent him some money,
little realising that this simple act of generosity was to be a major
step in leading them to God.

Soon they were invited to Bloy's humble home on Montmartre, where he
lived with his wife and two surviving daughters. Two decades later
Jacques was to write of this memorable visit: 'Once the threshold of
this house was crossed, all values were dislocated, as though by an
invisible switch. One knew, or one guessed, that only one sorrow
existed there - not to be a saint. And all the rest receded into the
twilight'.

Through Bloy the Maritains met artists and scientists who were
devout believers and who saw no conflict between reason and faith. This
impressed the young couple and led them to read more of Bloy's books.
Raissa, in particular, was very much moved by his work on the historic
mission of the Jews, Salvation is from the Jews. In fact, they
were so impressed that they paid for it to be reprinted, and Bloy, in
turn, dedicated it 'to my little Jewess Raissa (Rachel) whom her
brother Jesus will well know how to reward'.

How right he was! This book induced them to read the Scriptures and
to see the link between the Old and New Testaments. Not that the path
was smooth: in late 1905 Jacques was praying, 'My God, if you exist and
if you are the truth, make me know it'.

A stumbling block on the path was the behaviour of the so-called
Christians around them. How much we shall have to answer for at the
Judgement if we do not try genuinely to live Christianity in the events
of our everyday lives! And, on the other hand, how many souls, unknown
to us perhaps, can be led to God by the unspoken sermon of our beliefs
being shown in how we go about the little things that make up our
routine existence!

In early 1906 Raissa was again dangerously ill, and this seemed to
act as a catalyst in the Maritains' acceptance of Catholicism. In June
1906, along with Raissa's sister, Vera, they were received into the
Catholic Church, a year to the day after their godfather, Léon
Bloy, had first heard from them.

Thomism

Jacques' interest and competence in biology had increased to the
extent that they went on a fellowship to Heidelberg, where Jacques
studied experimental embryology under Hans Driesch. As so often happens
in life their original plans, which might have directed Jacques to
become just another scientist, were thwarted. The work in Heidelberg
was to be one more influence moving Jacques towards the philosophy of
Aristotle and Aquinas. Hans Driesch's studies of the development of
embryos of the sea-urchin had forced him to reintroduce into biology
concepts akin to those of Aristotle, notably the concept of entelechy,
and this had upset the mechanistic ideas current at the time.

After their return to Paris in 1908, Jacques spent some time working
for the publishing firm of Hachette. The routine work there did not
extend Jacques' talents in any way, but it left him with time to
prepare articles for publication and to keep up his scientific and
philosophical reading.

The latter soon extended to Thomism, the intellectual movement which
attempted to understand and develop the theology of St Thomas Aquinas
and to relate it to the problems and needs of the modern world. The
final 'push' towards Thomism came from his spiritual director, a
learned and holy Dominican named Father Humbert Clérissac.
Though his philosophical emphasis was very different from that of the
Maritains' first Catholic influence, Léon Bloy, Father
Clérissac shared Bloy's hatred of mediocrity, and his forceful
character overcame their prejudices against what they thought were the
dry subtleties of Thomism.

Raissa was the first to open the Summa Theologiae of St
Thomas Aquinas, as part of the theological and philosophical formation
which her director had planned for her. Raissa spent much time in
mental prayer and spiritual reading, relatively confined as she was by
her poor health, and her interior life was progressing rapidly. Not
that she did nothing else -- she helped Jacques when she could in his
compilation of several reference books for Hachette -- but she learnt
to utilise the limitations imposed by her sickness as the raw material
of her striving for genuine holiness.

Despite Raissa's enthusiasm for the poetry as well as the philosophy
of Aquinas, Jacques allowed a year to pass before he, too, became
engrossed in St Thomas. This was to be another turning point in
Jacques' life, and his thorough study of Thomas was to be the
foundation of his fame as one of the great commentators on Aquinas and
one of the most able philosophers of this century.

For Maritain, 'Thomism is the only philosophy whose peculiar
characteristic is that it is peculiar to nobody, strictly impersonal,
absolutely universal'. Claims such as this usually bewilder the non-
philosopher and often irritate non-Thomist philosophers, who often see
in Thomism a medieval body of dogma, irrelevant to the concerns of
modern man. But on the contrary, Jacques saw himself as a perennialist,
a philosopher of everlastingness, of those patterns common to all
things which recur and remain identical as patterns century after
century. Person and society, man and the state, authority and freedom,
human rights and equality, education and schooling are all topics on
which Thomism helped to form Jacques' views. He never hid his religious
affiliation, and so his judgements were often labelled as moralising by
non-moralists and as incorrect moralising by those who moralised in a
different way. In reality, Jacques was hard to pigeon-hole.

The Church and St Thomas

All of the popes of modern times have emphasised the continuing
importance of Thomistic philosophy. What might be called a Thomistic
renewal within the Catholic Church began in 1879 with Pope Leo XIII's
Encyclical, Aeterni Patris, and this document was just coming to
some sort of fruition about the time the Maritains were beginning their
study of the Summa Theologiae.

More recently the present Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, addressed
the Eighth International Thomistic Congress in 1980 on the relevance of
St Thomas to contemporary problems. After noting that since the
beginning of his pontificate he had not let any propitious occasion
pass without recalling the sublime figure of St Thomas Aquinas, the
Holy Father went on to point out that the principle of unity in St
Thomas is the harmony between the truths of reason and those of faith,
so necessary to balance rationalism (reason without faith) and fideism
(faith without reason). One of the reasons that has induced successive
popes to commend St Thomas as a sure guide in theological and
philosophical disciplines is his having set down so well the principles
underlying the relationship between faith and reason. Pope John Paul II
added two other reasons why St Thomas is so relevant today, and which
were also characteristics of the work of Jacques Maritain, his
understanding of the nature of man, and his understanding of the
relationship between science and philosophy. In the words of Pope John
Paul II: 'St Thomas has pointed out a path that can and should be
followed and updated without betraying its spirit and fundamental
principles, but also keeping in mind modern advances in science.
Science's true progress can never contradict philosophy, just as
philosophy can never contradict faith. . . Light can never be dimmed
but only strengthened by light. Science and philosophy can and should
work together so that both remain faithful to their own method' (The
Pope Teaches, vol. III, No.4, p.293).

This, then, was to mark the pattern of Jacques life's work. Raissa
was to help, but her expertise was to be more in the relationship
between philosophy and art, particularly poetry. Thus truth, goodness
and beauty were the foundations of their married life, their
intellectual life, and their interior life.

The Great War

But the Maritains were never other-worldly intellectuals. Their
capacity for friendship blossomed, and they began what was to continue
for many years, an informal open house at which everyone was made
welcome. Raissa and Vera served tea and circulated amongst their
guests, making sure everyone was introduced. Vera now lived with
Jacques and Raissa, acting as their secretary and housekeeper, and
helping her sister through her many sicknesses.

During these formative years before World War I, when he also taught
and studied philosophy at the College Stanislas, Jacques came in
contact with and was influenced by some of the most brilliant and
sensitive minds in France: Ernest Psichari, Charles Péguy,
Georges Rouault and Jean Cocteau.

In 1914 Jacques accepted the chair of modern philosophy at the
Institut Catholique in Paris, a position he held until 1939 when he was
sent to the United States of America by the French Government. At the
outbreak of the First World War Jacques presented himself for military
service, and again in 1917 and in 1918, but each time he was classified
as medically unfit because of lung weaknesses arising from childhood
pleurisy.

The war was to claim many of their closest friends, including Ernest
Psichari and Charles Péguy, the poet, playwright, polemicist and
patriot, whose friendship with the Maritains went back to their student
days. Both these men fell in action during the early days of the war.
Father Clérissac also died about this time, and many other
friends were also to die during the next four years of the war. One of
the last was a former student of Jacques, Pierre Villard.

Pierre was a sensitive young intellectual who had been drifting into
despair at the desolation of the war and had turned to Jacques for
inspiration. Jacques was never slow to respond to a cry for help, and
through a long correspondence he was able to encourage the development
of Pierre's high moral aspirations. Little did Jacques know that Pierre
was a young man of great wealth, who on his death was to leave half his
fortune to the Maritains. With the money Jacques was able to start a
circle for the study of Aquinas' teachings, so that Jacques and Raissa
could share his philosophical and spiritual riches with a still wider
group of friends. These circles were later to develop into a number of
well-organised Thomist Centres.

Friendship

As mentioned earlier, an over-riding impression one gets of the
Maritains throughout their lives is their capacity for friendships.
Here, they serve as models for our own lives. They were first of all
trying to cultivate their friendship with God; they were friends with
one another; and they made friendships with a wide circle of people
that lasted through thick and thin. Friendship was a fundamental part
of their apostolate.

Not that they used their friends in any way. They certainly
helped to bring many friends to God, just as their friend Léon
Bloy had helped them. They also helped their friends to bring other
friends to God. While these friendships had a supernatural dimension --
and surely true friendship must desire the ultimate good, the eternal
happiness of the friend -- their friendships were very human, very
warm, very genuine.

Friendship is demanding, friendship is giving. Friends are frank
with one another. Friendship is something we have to be aware of, to
take stock of, to work at. Friendship is a natural means whereby we
bring other people to God, and they in turn can bring other people, in
a kind of ripple effect. This does not mean preaching; it means that
one tries to develop a fervent love of God and our neighbour so that
people might feel the glow of the fire of this love.

This pre-supposes that we are trying to develop an interior life.
This does not just happen without effort. We need grace and spiritual
direction. God has promised us the grace and through his Church has
left us the means to acquire it. Spiritual direction is necessary, so
that we can interpret the road signs on the path of life as we strive
towards our final goal. It does not mean that we should all follow the
same path towards this common goal, but it is easy to get lost without
a map.

Action française

This capacity of the Maritains for friendship was soon to be tested
after the Great War by what was known as the Action française
affair. Action française was a movement, a school of thought
rather than a highly organised group, which had been founded in the
late nineteenth century and aimed at restoring the monarchy in France.
This was somehow seen by its adherents as a solution to the evils in
French society.

By 1920, Action française had gained considerable influence
among intellectuals and it was substantial enough to bring out a daily
newspaper, L'Action Française, edited by two eminent writers,
Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras. The movement was opposed to the
secularist and anti-clerical laws of the French republic, and most of
the Maritains' friends were associated with it. Jacques had often been
praised in its newspaper, and it had promoted some of his early books,
but the Maritains never had any formal connection with the
movement.

In 1926 Action française was finally condemned by the
Archbishop of Bordeaux and Pope Pius XI as a danger to the essence of
the Christian spirit. Furthermore, their newspaper and several of
Charles Maurras' books were placed on the index of forbidden books.
Many aspects of the business remain obscure, and it would divert us
from our story to explore them. But the affair had a number of effects
on the Maritains.

Some Catholics did not submit to the ban, and others did so only
reluctantly. Jacques and Raissa tried to help them see the good sense
of the Pope's judgement. Out of this came some important writings,
especially Jacques' The things that are not Caesar's. Like the
Church's ban on the movement, this was concerned with the primacy of
the spiritual order, while at the same time vigorously defending the
intrinsic excellence and worth of the temporal common good.
Spiritually, the book was rich in its charity and humility, and its
concern for souls going through a very real ordeal. Theologically, the
book was a landmark for its exploration of the relations between Church
and State, between the sacred and the profane.

Freedom and authority, politics and philosophy were henceforth to
play a large part in the writings and in the lives of Jacques and
Raissa. Spiritually, the experience not only enriched their own virtues
of obedience and charity, but by their example they were able to help
many other Frenchmen deepen their love for the Holy Father.

True Humanism

Artists, scientists, and composers visited the Maritains during the
twenties, while they developed the study of St Thomas in order to apply
it to contemporary problems. The opportunity for serious philosophical
study and the inspiration it gave them in their work drew people to
their study circles. The quiet strength of the Maritains' spirituality
resulted, with God's grace, in many conversions, so that Jacques and
Raissa became godparents many times over. Many vocations to the
priesthood and the religious life were born, too, as well as an
appreciation, gradual at first, but which was to reach fruition in
Vatican II, of the positive aspects of the vocation of the laity.

Some critics of the Maritains have disliked their constant
association of philosophy with apostolic concern. But for the Maritains
philosophy was nothing if not practical. Perhaps it is appropriate here
to look briefly at some aspects of Jacques' philosophy. His writings
are characterised by exact thought and lack of irrelevancies, and few
men can be compared to him in respect to the acumen with which he has
analysed political, economic and social questions. Out of these
analyses he has formulated a true humanism, suitable for modern man,
but arising from an appreciation of historical man.

In the middle ages, for instance, man was recognised as a person, 'a
unity of a spiritual nature, endowed with freedom of choice, wounded in
nature, made for a spiritual end'. The middle ages affirmed 'the
sovereign liberty and efficacy of divine grace, and the reality of the
human free will'. What Maritain calls 'the practical attitude of man in
the face of his destiny' was one of unconscious and unreflecting
simplicity of man's response to the effusion of divine grace'. Then,
through the influence of the philosophy of Descartes, although 'much
progress has been made . . . the misfortune of modern history is that
all this progress has been directed by a spirit of anthropocentrism, by
a naturalistic conception of man, and a Calvinist or Molinist
conception of grace and freedom'.

The proposed remedy for this warped humanism is a humanism which
tends to make man more truly human, which respects the rights of the
human person. This does not mean a reversion to the humanism of
medieval Christendom. The present era demands a society which is
'vitally Christian rather than one which is decoratively so'. To this
end, Jacques emphasised the need for pluralism and personalism.
Pluralism is demanded by the variety and diversity of the modern world.
Likewise, without fitting respect for personality, as distinct from
individuality, the new civilisation cannot function.

Jacques saw the acceptance of a true philosophy of knowledge as one
of the fundamental solutions to the spirit of anthropocentric humanism.
'This conquest of being, this progressive attainment of new truths, or
the progressive realisation of the ever-growing and ever-renewed
significance of truths already attained, opens and enlarges our mind
and life, and really situates them in freedom and autonomy'
(Education at the Crossroads, p. 12).

Jacques and Raissa were as much students at St John of the Cross as
they were of St Thomas Aquinas. Although it is probably more obvious in
Raissa's writings, especially her poetry, both Maritains had the souls
of contemplatives, despite their increasingly hectic lives. Not that
they were dreamers in any sense; rather, their apostolic lives were the
fruit of their contemplation, particularly their mental prayer.

Their contemplation was more than mental prayer though. It was an
awareness of the presence of God in their daily lives, a sense of being
at ease with the will of God, in somewhat the same way as a happily
married couple can be concentrating on different things in the same
room yet are nevertheless aware of each other's presence.

Their long study of mysticism and poetry made them realise the
inadequacies of language, and it is partly this, and partly Jacques'
pedagogic instincts, which make him return again and again to the same
themes, such as the interplay of freedom and authority, man and the
state, science and religion, faith and reason, grace and nature.
Furthermore, most of the books which deal with these topics grew out of
talks and essays.

America

Jacques was in great demand as a speaker, even though he
underestimated his gifts in this regard. It was this ability, as well
as the fame of his writings, which led to invitations to visit America
in the 1920s.

During these trips he continued to analyse the relationship between
divine grace and free will. Out of this grew his belief in the
excellence and worth of the temporal common good. The common good of
people requires that political society should have a hierarchical
structure, but, at the same time, authority must be exercised for the
sake of people. Jacques believed that the American ideal of government
of the people, by the people and for the people was meaningless if the
people were intellectually undeveloped. Hence the enormous importance
of education.

In education, as elsewhere, Jacques emphasised freedom, but not the
licence of unbridled freedom. Individuals, and nations too for that
matter, can become intolerable dictators if their assertion of freedom
degenerates into mere licence, such as when they ignore the rights of
others or their own responsibilities, or when they refuse to give to
others the tolerance they demand for themselves. He espoused a liberal
education requiring discipline and bending and shaping, but not
moulding. Which is why we need teachers, but teachers who respect the
spiritual dynamism and the mysterious identity within each child.

The Maritains had gone to Chicago in 1932 after Jacques had given a
series of lectures at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto.
This had been found by the Basilian Fathers, and Etienne Gilson and
Gerald Phelan, with whom Jacques was to enjoy a long collaboration.
Phelan later founded a similar institute at Notre Dame University,
which was also to benefit from the Maritains' visits during the
thirties.

These visits were to continue until 1938, when they also visited
Argentina and Brazil - there had been a Jacques Maritain Centre in Rio
de Janeiro since 1925.

It was in 1938 in New York that Jacques Maritain met Thomas Merton,
who later recalled in The Seven Storey Mountain: 'I only spoke a
few conventional words to Maritain, but the impression you got from
this gentle, stooping Frenchman with much grey hair was one of
tremendous kindness and simplicity and godliness. And that was enough;
you did not need to talk to him. I came away feeling very comforted
that there was such a person in the world'.

Although the Maritains' interests in the USA increased during the
1930s they were still as involved as ever in events in Europe,
particularly in their homeland. Thus we find Jacques a co-signatory in
1934 of a pamphlet entitled Pour le Bien Commun. This manifesto
expressed the Maritains' attitudes to social issues, and was an
application to France of the teachings of Popes Leo XIII and Pius
XI.

The Second World War

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939 the French Ministry of
Cultural Relations urged Jacques to carry out his planned schedule of
lectures in North America: he was of more value to France as a symbol
and source of encouragement than a possible prisoner (particularly with
a Jewish wife) in Europe. Thus the years of the war were spent in exile
in USA, where, in addition to his lecturing and writing, Jacques helped
to found with Jacques Hadamard, the famous mathematician, and others,
the École Libre des Hautes Études, a university-in-exile
in New York. Much of the material produced in these years was widely
distributed by underground groups in France to sustain resistance to
the invaders and their puppet regime.

It was during the years of the Second World War that Raissa produced
those two beautiful books, We Were Friends Together and
Adventures in Grace. Her admirable translator into English,
Julie Kernan, had this to say of Raissa: 'As our association and
friendship deepened, I appreciated even more her gentleness and
simplicity, the charity of her judgements, the remarkable range of her
mind, her modest estimate of herself'. Raissa's natural timidity
reasserted itself during the war years, and, with her poor health and
the depressing news from France, she became something of a recluse. It
was left to her more practical sister, Vera, to manage the details of
the small household, while Raissa spent much time at her desk.

As soon as the USA entered the war Jacques began regular broadcasts
to France. By 1942 his effect on French morale was so great that
Jacques was invited by General de Gaulle to enter his National
Committee of Free France. Jacques turned down the offer though, as he
felt he had more to offer France by continuing in his role of teacher
and broadcaster.

Moved by natural compassion, as well as the love of his friends and
his knowledge of the cultural heritage of Raissa and Vera, Jacques made
several attacks in his broadcasts on anti-Semitism. Many of Jacques'
radio pleas to his compatriots in France were on the the theme of
fraternal unity, and it was a bitter disappointment when he returned to
France at the end of the war to see how little there was of it. Perhaps
this is why he felt that he could no longer ignore the plea of General
de Gaulle to serve his country in public life.

Ambassador to the Vatican

For three years from 1945 Jacques served in the post of French
Ambassador to the Vatican. The particular importance of this position
at that time arose from the fact that France had been torn by both the
occupation and the Liberation, and many problems had arisen for Church-
State relations in what was a nominally Catholic country. In
particular, the provisional government's demand that more than thirty
bishops resign their sees required delicate handling by Maritain and
his opposite number in Paris, the Papal Nuncio to France, who was none
other than Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, later to be Pope John XXIII.

Another issue was the worker-priest movement, to which both
Archbishop Roncalli and Jacques were sympathetic. A number of the
French clergy were experimenting with this form of apostolate, but it
was later to be condemned by Rome because of its excesses. Jacques'
interest was symptomatic of his concern over many years with how best
Christianity should come to terms with secular reality, and how Christ
could be brought into every aspect of society, and not just a
particular time on Sundays.

Another who was involved in encouraging such developments was
Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, later to be Pope Jolin's successor
as Pope Paul VI. He had long been an admirer of the Maritains, and was
later to refer to Jacques as his 'teacher'. He had actually translated
into Italian one of Jacques' early books, The Three Reformers,
many years before.

The influence of Jacques on the two Popes cannot be fully assessed
here, but there are indications of Jacques' thought in the great social
encyclicals of these Popes, John's Mater et Magistra, (CTS S
259) and Paul's Populorum Progressio (CTS S 273).

Pope Paul's encyclical on the development of peoples received
universal acclaim for the way in which, as Arthur Bottomley, the
British Minister of Overseas Development in 1966, put it, it
'proclaimed in loud and clear tones what everyone's responsibilities
are in a world where two out of every three persons live in conditions
which we in this country would not wish on our domestic animals'.

Pope Paul refers explicity to Jacques' writings (cf.n.20) and
Jacques' overall influence is well illustrated by the following
quotation from the encyclical: 'if further development calls for the
work of more and more technicians, even more necessary are the deep
thought and reflection of wise men in search of a new humanism which
will enable modern man to find himself anew by embracing the higher
values of love and friendship, of prayer and contemplation. This is
what will permit the fullness of authentic development, a development
which is for each and for all the transition from less human conditions
to those which are more human'.

Raissa was enraptured by the beauty and history of Rome, even though
the living conditions there in the first post-war years were terrible.
As well as her social duties as the wife of an ambassador, she managed
to do a lot of writing whilst in Rome. She finished a work on Abraham
and the first ages of the human moral conscience, some poems inspired
by various Roman scenes, and a book on the art of Marc Chagall, a
formidable effort testifying to her versatility, sensitivity and
learning.

Jacques gave a number of lectures at the University of St Thomas in
Rome (the Angelicum) and saw some of his wartime writings published.
His ambassadorial duties were demanding in that era of reconstruction
and resettlement of refugees, and the time he had to give to these was
at the expense of the reading and reflection which had previously
characterised his life.

During this time, too, Jacques was appointed President of the French
delegation to a UNESCO Conference in Mexico. There he gave the opening
address on the topic of 'The Possibilities for Cooperation in a Divided
World'.

Last years together

The period in Rome was followed by seven years at Princeton
University, New Jersey, as Professor of Philosophy. Princeton then
conferred the title of Professor Emeritus on him, and other honours
came the way of Jacques from many other universities, not the least
being the emergence of a number of Jacques Maritain Centres such as
that established at Notre Dame University, Indiana, in 1958.

During his time at Princeton Jacques had continued to give lectures
at Chicago, Notre Dame and Hunter College, New York. The great product
of this period was published eventually as Moral Philosophy: An
Historical and Critical Survey of the Great Systems.

1954 saw Jacques felled by a heart attack from which he recovered
slowly. Throughout this ordeal the affection in which Jacques was held
by so many people moved Raissa to tears, as Julie Kernan recounts in
her book, Our Friend, Jacques Maritain. A heart attack also
struck Vera in 1956, to be followed by cancer, from which she died
after a long illness on the last day of 1959. As well as acting as
their secretary and housekeeper, Vera had been as close to Raissa as
two sisters could possibly be. It was not long before a fatal illness
was to strike Raissa, too. Back in Paris in mid-1960, she suffered a
cerebral thrombosis. Her ordeal turned out to be particularly painful,
but she bore it with the serenity of one who had always lived in the
presence of God. He eventually called her to her final home in the
month of the Holy Souls that year.

Jacques was devastated. Their marriage had been so very, very happy,
despite Raissa's illness. Only a few years after their wedding they
had, with the approval of their spiritual director, decided to live a
life of celibacy within marriage for the love of God. This is almost
incomprehensible in a world preoccupied with sex, but in the context of
their marriage, and only with the advice of their confessors, it was a
life of real heroism.

Childless though they might have been, their obvious affection for
one another right through their married lives spilled over to their
friends, and particularly to their numerous godchildren. Distraught as
Jacques was by the loss of his best friend of 56 years, God was not
going to allow Jacques to be alone, or idle.

The Little Brothers

A call for help soon came to Jacques from Father Rene Voillaume, the
founder of the Little Brothers of Jesus. Jacques was invited to be the
lay advisor on their philosophical studies at their study centre in
Toulouse. There he found himself surrounded by about sixty young men
who had joined this unusual religious congregation. Its ideals are
those of Father Charles de Foucauld, a former army officer and explorer
who devoted his life to the salvation of the desert nomads of the
Sahara. When they have finished their period of preparation the
brothers work at menial tasks and return to their religious houses each
evening to spend many hours in prayer. They wear a habit over their
working clothes when at home in community.

In preparing lectures and seminars for these students Jacques grew
younger and healthier, and out of these talks came one of his most
important contributions to Thomism, God and the Permission of
Evil.

Honours kept coming to Jacques despite his relative seclusion in the
Garonne, honours he would have loved his dear Raissa to share. As Julie
Kernan reports, he never recovered from her loss, and kept fresh
flowers before two pictures of her on his desk.

The year after her death Jacques started working through Raissa's
notebooks and papers, which dealt with her interior life and which she
had naturally kept to herself during her lifetime. Eventually, under
pressure from friends, these were published as Raissa's Journal,
a powerful testimony of spiritual growth whilst living in the midst of
the world.

During the Second Vatican Council Jacques was invited to Rome. He
was much moved by the ecumenical efforts of Pope Paul VI and the
Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I, an effort of reconciliation which
Jacques had fostered more than thirty years before. In his closing
address Pope Paul paid special tribute to 'the great Christian
philosopher Maritain'.

Some of the questions to be discussed at the Vatican Council were
issues which Jacques had spent his life struggling with, particularly
the relationship of Christianity to the spirit of the age. The aim of
Jacques Maritain was to separate the wheat from the chaff in modern
thought; a false egalitarianism often prevents us from recognising the
chaff.

Maritain himself regarded the delineation of the lay vocation as one
of the great accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council. Jacques was
an 'inveterate layman' who was opposed to that form of clericalism,
still extant, where the clergy try to regiment the laity in the
temporal sphere.

Lay people must become the eyes and ears, the voice and legs and
arms of Jesus Christ, as they try to Christianise the secular world,
but in a lay way, not in a clerical way, and acting on their own
responsibility. Many of these ideas appeared in Jacques' two books,
The Peasant of the Garonne and On the Church of Christ,
which appeared as he neared his ninetieth birthday.

Yet in 1969 this complete layman asked to join, and was accepted
into the Little Brothers, with whom he had spent so much time in
Toulouse. A number of concessions were made to his frailty, and
eventually he made his vows. Curiously, the Little Brothers, whose
congregation includes priests, have many of the characteristics of the
worker-priest movement which so interested Archbishop Roncalli and
Jacques many years before, but with safeguards to ensure that in doing
the work of the Lord they do not forget the Lord of the work, as Pope
John Paul II was to put it when he spoke to priests and seminarians in
Ireland.

He steadily grew more feeble, but he managed one last visit to
Raissa's grave in Kolbsheim before returning to Toulouse where he died
of a heart attack on 28 April 1973. It was almost seven hundred years
after the death of St Thomas Aquinas, interest in whose work he had
done so much to foster, and in the city where the Angelic Doctor had
been reburied. His last wish was to be buried beside Raissa, and that
is where his earthly remains now lie, while they await the final
resurrection.

Conclusion

What more can we learn from the Maritains' lives? To appreciate
their thought one must really go to their books, and we have mentioned
some of the easier ones to read. Many of Jacques' works, such as his
Introduction to Logic and Introduction to Philosophy, are
by no means easy reading. He was not always well served by his English
translators, and his books, which often grew out of lectures, sometimes
presuppose a milieu of interaction within a group of people. They
demand concentration and effort, but the persevering reader will be
rewarded by clarity of thought, nobility of vision and an uncommon
common sense.

The Maritains' approach to God was never legalistic or narrowly
scholastic. It was based on love: adherence to the will of God, not the
avoidance of sin, was their guide. This is a matter of being open to
the grace of God, and of really wanting to please God in the same way a
successful businessman wants to make money or a hard working student
wants to learn.

How can we please God? One way is to use our talents for the glory
of God, and in this we can make Jacques and Raissa our model. It is one
thing to make a morning offering; it is quite another to offer up all
the details of our humdrum, everyday activities. Of course, Jacques and
Raissa were superbly talented in their different ways, but all of us
have talents on loan from God, whether it be the one, the five or the
ten of the Gospel parable.

If we focus on the highpoints of the Maritains' lives, their great
success as writers and teachers, we can miss the effort needed by
Raissa to accept cheerfully her almost constant illness and to try to
maintain a plan for her interior life, and not just adopt an invalid
mentality. We can miss the effort of Jacques to read, to reflect, and
to struggle with the difficult passages of philosophy and theology and
to do things as a layman and not just a cleric in lay clothes.

We can miss their efforts to be true friends to their friends, their
efforts to realise that to fail to be concerned for the eternal
salvation of a friend is to fail to be a friend, that friends do not
count the cost, that friends are not begrudging of time or effort.

The lives of the Maritains, impressive as they were, are more than
something to be read about, to be admired, and then forgotten. Both
their writings and the no less real qualities of their virtues are part
of the heritage we share as members of the Universal Church, for which
we thank God as we honour the centenary of their births.

1.This quotation is from We Have Been Friends
Together, p.40; as this is not intended to be a scholarly document,
references will only be included occasionally, to aquaint the reader
unfamiliar with the Maritains' main books and essays.